Death in Hades Wells
Mystery - Published 2025
Death in Hades Wells is Muffy Morrigan's first mystery novel set in the arid desert of Arizona - a place she knows well from her early work as an archaeologist , land surveyor - and 'bit-identifier')
In quiet Hades Wells, Duncan Keogh, an archaeologist, makes a grisly discovery on his dig. Clues in the burial point to the body being the victim of a vicious murder. Enlisting the aid of police captain, Nate Mondragon, and local expert, Dizzy Donovan, he soon finds himself embroiled in the investigation. When an officer guarding his site is assaulted, the mystery deepens.
With stolen antiquities and drugs being discovered scattered throughout the area, the list of suspects continues to grow. Then when one of them is attacked and left to die in the desert, the three realize that in Hades Wells, it’s not just the heat that kills.
About Death in Hades Wells
A long time in the making
I started writing Death in Hades Wells, at least in my head, sometime in the late 1980s. I was working as an archaeologist in Arizona and spent a lot of time wandering alone through creosote bush and cholla. Little snippets of scenes would pop into my head. I think I discovered the perfect spot for a murder one day when I took a lunch break and I found the remnants of an old mining camp set alongside a wash deep in the desert.
Over the years, the story has resided in the back of my mind, finally finding light of day for the first time in 2001. It was refined a couple of times and then set aside, only to be rediscovered in 2024. A few rewrites, a lot of muttering and more rewrites later, and Death in Hades Wells was completed.
As I worked on the rewrite, it kindled again that deep, abiding love I have for the Mojave Desert. The desert most people think of when they think of Arizona is full of saguaros. The desert I love is the harsh, hot land nestled along the Colorado river. There is something magical in a hot day, the mirage casting light that looks like flowing water over the dry land. The places in Death in Hades Wells, while fictitious, are based, nonetheless, on real places. I hoped as I wrote that readers would find a longing for that hot country as well.